Hockey Mom is a short film written and directed by Adam Scheiner. I feel the need to bring up the fact that I personally know the filmmaker but my relationship with him will not impact my critique of his film. I had to bring it up so I could address the fact that this is not a plant review, this is my actual opinion.
The film is shot from the perspective of a faux cheesy cable sports show that follows a family as their child joins a hockey team. What I think really works about this story is the fact that while there are some absurd elements (the host of the show has a really cartoonish French accent), most of the film has a really strong sense of reality and the comedy comes from how the characters react to situations. I would say it reminded me of the work of Mike Judge (particulary King of the Hill and Office Space) as well as Greg Daniels (also worked on King of the Hill, The Office, and Parks and Recreation). I find it to be so much more rewarding when comedy comes from a place of well defined characters who say things that ring true to who they are as opposed to obvious moments of a character spouting off a line that is clearly intended to be a joke (Family Guy, The Hangover).
At 19 minutes, the film feels perfectly paced. It never feels like it's stretching the running time or condensing too much. It seems just right. The script is really sharp; you get jokes thrown at you in a very rapid-fire manner. That may sound showy or flashy but everything is delivered in a much more understated fashion that it works. Another thing that I really enjoyed was the fact that you feel like you know these characters quite well
even though you don't have a lot of time to get to know them. Part of that is that the acting is really good for this type of short. The mother and father really carry the film with how they react to everything. They play it in an understated and retrained way, so you can have these absurd elements but you still believe the reality of the film.
If I had to give some criticisms, it is that the son is not developed enough for you to ever care about him. He's also not funny enough for you to over look that fact either. One could argue he's more of a secondary character but I think it would've helped the film if he had some more characteristics that you could like or relate to in some way. My other problem is that the short feels kind of slight. It doesn't really make any sort of statements about anything and I wouldn't say it's a meaningful film. At the same time, can you criticize a movie for not doing something that it didn't set out to do? I feel like that will depend on the viewer. The film does accomplish what it sets out to do and I found it to be a funny and rewarding experience.
What I find more interesting
if you look at this in a larger context, is what Adam Scheiner could do with a film that isn't confined to a documentary format and what he would do if he set his sights on something with more meaning to it. He seems to have really great instincts when it comes to working with actors and getting them to deliver a good performance. He also has a great instinct of where to place the camera and just how to move it, which I think allowed him to shoot many scenes with little to no coverage. A lot of young filmmakers try to do long takes, but it's rare to see someone that can make it work, let alone make it work within the context of the story. I look forward to seeing what Scheiner does next, especially when he has already shown he can make something out of nothing. It's clear that he didn't have a huge budget on this film and he managed to make it in a way that felt organic to the story as opposed to constrained.